#flood brooklyn for gaza

[eretzyisrael]

by Rick Moran

More than 7,000 pro-Hamas protesters marched across the Brooklyn Bridge, shutting it down briefly, chanting anti-Semitic slogans. and calling for the elimination of the Jewish State “by any means.”  The “Flood Brooklyn for Gaza” protest was held on Shabbat — something Jewish leaders pointed out was almost certainly a deliberate snub.

“It’s not an accident that pro-Hamas activists would pick this place to protest Jews,” said former City Councilman David Greenfield, a Brooklyn Democrat.

The significance of the protest site was not lost on New York’s Hasidic Jewish community. The marchers wound their way through Crown Heights, home to thousands of Hasidic Jews. Orthodox Rabbi Motti Seligson, 41, of Crown Heights noted that the march was scheduled at the same time as an annual gathering where more than 1,000 Hasidic college students from around the world come to Crown Heights.

“We’re seeing forces of evil that are promoting murder genocide of Israelis and civilians in Gaza because of the support for the terrorist elements that are in their midst,” he said.

The pro-Hamas rally proved to be fun for all ages.

New York Post:

Earlier, Marie Edward, 67, of Sunset Park, held a sign reading “Zionism is terrorism” while watching others march along Eastern Parkway. She accused Israelis of being the real “killers” and defended Hamas’ heinous Oct. 7 massacre. “It’s not a question of ‘justified.’ If you are occupied, you fight back and do what they did…they will fight back,” she said. One of the protesters was just 15 years old and bore a sign reading, “F–k Israel all my homies hate Israel” — a mockery of the Middle Eastern country made in the format of an internet meme.

[akajustmerry]

i'm going to start sitcom superiority discourse for a CAUSE!

WHICH OF THESE USA SITCOMS IS THE MOST INSUFFERABLE TO YOU?

please, share for sample size and to draw attention to Nesma's @nesmamomen GoFundMe! Share or donate and you'll help provide aid to and evacuate 13 members of her family trapped in Gaza. right now, winter is on the way and the tents are flooding. Nesma sent me these pictures yesterday.

At the time of writing Nesma's GoFundMe is around 35K from its goal. We all feel helpless and exhausted. But even sharing this post helps. The best cure for feeling like there's nothing you can do is to do something!

[the-garbanzo-annex-jr]

NEW YORK (AP) — Hundreds of pro-Palestinian protesters marched to the Brooklyn Museum Friday afternoon, set up tents in the lobby and unfurled a “Free Palestine” banner from the building’s roof before police moved in to make arrests.

New York City police officers tackled and punched some protesters during scuffles that broke out in the crowd outside the museum while some demonstrators hurled plastic bottles at officers and shouted insults. Other protesters held banners, waved Palestinian flags and chanted boisterously on the steps of the grand, Beaux Arts museum, which is the city’s second largest.

The rally started Friday afternoon across the street from the Barclays Center, home of the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets. Marchers banging drums and chanting then made their way to the museum about a mile away.

Organizers, including the group Within Our Lifetime, called on supporters to “flood” and “de-occupy” the museum, saying they wanted to take over the building until officials “ disclose and divest ” from any investments linked to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Videos posted on social media showed guards at the museum trying to secure its doors against the surging crowd, and demonstrators finding other ways inside.

Spokespersons for the museum didn’t respond to emails and phone messages seeking comment late Friday, but an NYPD spokesperson confirmed protesters had been taken into custody. The department didn’t immediately have an estimate for how many have been arrested or what charges they might face.

New York City has seen hundreds of street demonstrations since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began in October.

The Brooklyn Museum sits at the edge of Crown Heights, which is home to one of the city’s largest communities of Orthodox Jews.

[catdotjpeg]

New York City police say 34 people are being held in custody following a pro-Palestinian protest at the Brooklyn Museum in New York City on Friday. They reported damage to some artwork and harassment of security staff by demonstrators. During Friday’s demonstration, pro-Palestine demonstrators set up tents in the lobby and unfurled a “Free Palestine” banner from the building’s roof before police moved in to make arrests. City police said the 34 people in custody were being processed, and charges were being determined. Organisers, including the group Within Our Lifetime, called on supporters to “flood” and “de-occupy” the museum, saying they wanted to take over the building until officials “disclose and divest” from any investments linked to Israel’s actions in Gaza.

-- "Thirty-four people arrested after pro-Palestine protest in Brooklyn" by Edna Mohamed for Al Jazeera, 1 Jun 2024 16:45 GMT

As a general rule, it's wise to take anything the NYPD says (if you take it at all) with a grain of salt. Even me saying "take it with a grain of salt" feels like an understatement. NYPD was also seen at yesterday's action shoving women and punching people on the ground to the point where at least one person was being seen taken into an arrest van with a bloodied face, tackling bystanders, and removing the hijab of a Palestinian organizer with Within Our Lifetime. This is not the first time that her hijab has been removed by the cops. NYPD has been violently harassing Palestinian demonstrations and targeting Within Our Lifetime and their organizers for months.

Currently, organizers are still waiting for people who were detained yesterday to be released.

[fromchaostocosmos]

Within Our Lifetime was established in 2015 as NYC Students for Justice in Palestine, a branch of the national campus movement, advocating for “anti-normalization” with all “Zionist organizations” and the Palestinian “right to resist.” Later that year, it criticized the pro-Palestinian movement as overly focused on the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, precipitating a break with National Students for Justice in Palestine.

During the rallies, protesters chant for the destruction of Israel and call to “globalize the intifada,” a reference to two uprisings against Israel, one of which was characterized by a rash of deadly suicide bombings. The group has also voiced support for terrorism against Israelis.

Before Oct. 7, Within Our Lifetime drew thousands of activists to some of its events and gradually became the leading anti-Israel protest group in the city. Despite its prominence, it is not an independent nonprofit organization and its fundraising runs through Wespac, a small nonprofit in Westchester County that serves as a clearinghouse for donations to pro-Palestinian groups around the country.

Within Our Lifetime is led by Nerdeen Kiswani, a Palestinian-American who grew up in Brooklyn. Kiswani drew major attention and criticism from Jewish groups in 2022 when she delivered a speech at the City University of New York Law School commencement in which she decried alleged “Zionist harassment by well-funded organizations with ties to the Israeli government and military.”

Kiswani says she has faced personal blowback because of her activism, telling the pro-Palestinian website Mondoweiss in 2022 that Jewish advocacy groups and individuals including the right-wing pundit Ben Shapiro had directed their followers to criticize her.

“I helped start WOL because I felt there was a disconnect between what was happening on the ground in Palestine, and what organizers on campuses were calling for,” she told Mondoweiss. “The discussions and a lot of the things that supporters of Palestine were talking about in these academic spaces were not reflective of what the people on the ground are experiencing.” In March, Kiswani appeared at a Columbia University event where speakers praised Hamas. Kiswani also attended Columbia’s protest encampment in the spring and Within Our Lifetime urged followers to mass at that encampment and another at the City College of New York.

The group has gained increased visibility since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which sparked the war in Gaza. On that day, Within Our Lifetime posted support on Instagram for the Hamas invasion, which killed 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 250 hostage. “We must defend the Palestinian right to resist zionist settler violence and support Palestinian resistance in all its forms. By any means necessary. With no exceptions and no fine print,” the group said on Oct. 7. The controversies mounted as the group held near-daily rallies across the city, sometimes shutting down traffic on major thoroughfares, resulting in dozens of arrests. Advertisements for the rallies often call on followers to “flood” a location, echoing Hamas’ name for the Oct. 7 attack, the “Al Aqsa Flood.”

Within Our Lifetime had 62,000 followers on Instagram in 2022, according to Mondoweiss. By November, when it distributed the map of Jewish organizations in New York, the account had 121,000 followers.

Within Our Lifetime now communicates through its Twitter account and on the messaging app Telegram, where it has close to 6,000 followers. The group is closely tied to student activists in the city, especially pro-Palestinian groups in the CUNY system. Within Our Lifetime and college groups advertise each other’s rallies and amplify each other’s messaging, as they did ahead of the Baruch protest. Within Our Lifetime and student protest organizers often send out identical messaging on Telegram within minutes of each other.

In 2022, Kiswani and Mohammed led a protest during which an activist associated with the group, Saadah Masoud, beat a Jewish man. At least two other activists who have protested with the group have been imprisoned for attacking Jews. At the Brooklyn Museum protest, demonstrators harassed Jews who were walking past. Last week, after the Brooklyn Museum protest, Within Our Lifetime urged its followers to “take autonomous action” against the museum and other cultural institutions in the city in retaliation for arrests at the rally. The group released a map marking museums with inverted red triangles, a Hamas symbol that the terror group uses to identify targets in its propaganda videos. Soon afterward, vandals defaced the homes of four Brooklyn Museum officials in the city, using the same symbol. The group has doubled down on its approach following the criticism over the Nova protest and its targeting of the Brooklyn Museum. “If you take peace from the people, we take peace from you,” the group said in a post on X, where it has 28,000 followers. The post was accompanied by an inverted red triangle.

[good-ira]

From the Flood Brooklyn for Gaza March. 12/9/23

[graymanbriefing]

Civil Unrest / Societal Collapse / Citizen Actions Brief: National Summary 》In Springfield, MO; LGBT activists disrupted a pro-women's sports event hosted by Riley Gaines (professional swimmer) and Bethany Ha...(CLASSIFIED) 》In Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington D.C. and select school districts nationwide on Feb 4-9; public schools participated in the Black Lives Matter School's Week of Action that included scheduled singing of the "Black Panther Children’s Song", lessons on queer affirming ideals, social justice theories, and other edicts of the "13 Guidelines" taught by the BLM action group. The group teaches students concepts such as "fostering a queer-affirming network", "disrupting the Western-prescribed nuclear family structure" and counter Zionism by suppo...(CLASSIFIED) 》In Minneapolis, MN; three conservative  organizations housed in the same building were set on fire. Upper Midwest Law Center (UMLC), TakeCharge, and Center of the American Experiment (CAE) were the only offices with fire damage. Leaders of the separate groups called the alleged attack "domestic terrorism" and said the "fires were obviously set by someone. They targeted conservative organizations. They didn’t firebomb the chiropractors or psychologists or Manufacturers Alliance. We are working with authorities to try to identify the perpetrators." Law enforcement is investig...(CLASSIFIED) 》White House officials reportedly invited Osama Siblani to a meeting to discuss the Israel/Palestine conflict. Siblani is a known terrorist sympathizer who supports Hezbollah a...(CLASSIFIED) 》In FL; LGBT activists staged a "die-in" to protest Florida's Division of Motor Vehicle (DMV) requiring biological sexes be printed on identification cards and driver's licenses. Transgender protestors pretended they were dead and la...(CLASSIFIED) 》In Brooklyn, NY on February 10th; pro-Palestinian rioted dueing the "Flood Brooklyn for Gaza" event. Rioters assau...(CLASSIFIED) 》In Conway, SC; 15,000 Trump supporters rallied at a campaign event. Intersectio...(CLASSIFIED, get briefs in real-time unredacted by joining at www.graymanbriefing.com) 》Poll: More or less coverage of protests and civil unrest?

[xtruss]

New York, New York, US 🇺🇸! People march over the Brooklyn Bridge as Pro-Palestinian protesters attend the Flood Brooklyn for Gaza demonstration. Photograph: Caitlin Ochs/Reuters

Edinburgh, UK 🇬🇧! The Scott Monument framed by trees in autumn colours in the city’s Princes Street Gardens. Photograph: Jane Barlow/PA

Linköping, Sweden 🇸🇪! Värmland Sheep eat colourful leaves. Photograph: Pradeep Dambarage/NurPhoto/Shutterstock

Hollywood, California, US 🇺🇸! Guests at the Dia De Los Muertos Celebration at Hollywood Forever. Photograph: Emma McIntyre/Getty Images

South Africa Win the Rugby World Cup 2023, France (8 September – 28 October) Final! South Africa 🇿🇦 beat New Zealand 🇳🇿 to Win Men’s Rugby World Cup Final. New Zealand 11-12 South Africa. All Blacks left to rue first-half red card for captain Sam Cane. South Africa’s Siya Kolisi lifts the William Webb Ellis Trophy. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

The 2023 Rugby World Cup, France 🇫🇷 (8 September – 28 October)! New Zealand’s Sam Cane looks broken as he walks past the trophy. Photograph: Tom Jenkins/The Guardian

Left: Elation For South Africa 🇿🇦; Commiserations For New Zealand 🇳🇿! Franco Mostert Beams at the Webb Ellis Trophy CREDIT: PA/Mike Egerton. Right: RG Snyman nibbles on the medal of a bemused Jasper Wiese CREDIT: AFP/Franck Fife

[eretzyisrael]

By Rich Calder and Matthew Sedacca

Far-left billionaire kingmaker George Soros has funneled more than $15 million since 2016 to groups behind this month’s pro-Palestine protests, where demonstrators openly cheered Hamas militants’ craven terrorist attacks on Israel.

A Post examination of Open Society Foundations records shows Soros’ grant-making network gave $13.7 million of the money through Tides Center, a deep-pocketed lefty advocacy group that sponsors several nonprofits who’ve justified Hamas’ bloody attacks while claiming Palestinians obsessed with the eradication of the Jewish state are the real victims.

Tides’ beneficiaries include Illinois-based Adalah Justice Project, which on the day of the Oct. 7 massacre posted a photo on Instagram of a bulldozer tearing part of Israel’s border fence down and a caption: “Israeli colonizers believed they could indefinitely trap two million people in an open-air prison… no cage goes unchallenged.”

Members of the Palestinian advocacy group occupied California Rep. Ro Khanna’s office on Oct. 20 to demand he sign a resolution calling for ceasefire in Gaza. Adalah’s members also co-sponsored a rally that same day in Bryant Park where hostile demonstrators spewed antisemitic chants and waved a sign that read “I DO NOT CONDEMN HAMAS.”

It also gave $30,000 in 2020 to Desis Rising Up and Moving, another co-sponsor of the Bryant Park protest where 139 people were arrested, financial records show.

Open Society Foundations gave $60,000 in 2018 to the Arab American Association of New York, a group co-founded by politically connected activist Linda Sarsour that helped plan a hate-filled “Flood Brooklyn for Palestine” protest in Bay Ridge on Oct. 21, where protestors called for the eradication of Israel and held a sign of the Israeli flag in a trash basket that read “Please keep the world clean!”

Open Society Foundations also awarded $1.5 million to Adalah’s founding nonprofit, Adalah – The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, but only $800,000 of it was received before the legal center cut ties with the American organization in 2018. The legal center says its mission is to promote human rights in Israel.

Other Soros-backed, Palestinian advocacy groups whose members have been spewing hate at rallies since the massacre include Jewish Voice for Peace and If Not Now, which received $650,000 and $400,000, respectively.

[johnadamsbignaturals]

FOR THOSE IN THE NYC AREA:

🔻Flood Brooklyn for Black & Palestinian Liberation! Justice for Sonya Massey!

🗓️ Saturday, August 3rd

🇵🇸 International Day of Solidarity With Gaza & Palestinian Prisoners

⏱️ 5:00pm

📍 Barclay��s Center (Brooklyn, NY)

Twitter/X: @wolpalestine

📞 Telegram: t.me/wolprotest

Organizers: Within Our Lifetime

Baltimore: Justice for Sonya Massey Thursday, August 1 - 6 pm

Meet 6 pm @ 247 Dallas Court (Orleans & Dallas) March 6:30 pm to BPD Headquarters, 601 E. Fayette Street Wednesday, July 31, 6 pm to 8 pm PPA volunteers meeting and work session at Harriet Tubman Solidarity Center, 2011 N. Charles St, Balto 21218

[southeastasianists]

In the end, the military campaign was called Operation Ranch Hand, but it originally went by a more appropriately hellish appellation: Operation Hades. As part of this Vietnam War effort, from 1961 to 1971, the United States sprayed over 73 million liters of chemical agents on the country to strip away the vegetation that provided cover for Vietcong troops in “enemy territory.”

Using a variety of defoliants, the U.S. military also intentionally targeted cultivated land, destroying crops and disrupting rice production and distribution by the largely communist National Liberation Front, a party devoted to reunification of North and South Vietnam.

Some 45 million liters of the poisoned spray was Agent Orange, which contains the toxic compound dioxin. It has unleashed in Vietnam a slow-onset disaster whose devastating economic, health and ecological impacts that are still being felt today.

This is one of the greatest legacies of the country’s 20-year war, but is yet to be honestly confronted. Even Ken Burns and Lynn Novick seem to gloss over this contentious issue, both in their supposedly exhaustive “Vietnam War” documentary series and in subsequent interviews about the horrors of Vietnam.

Vietnam’s half-century of disaster

More than 10 years of U.S. chemical warfare in Vietnam exposed an estimated 2.1 to 4.8 million Vietnamese people to Agent Orange. More than 40 years on, the impact on their health has been staggering.

This dispersion of Agent Orange over a vast area of central and south Vietnam poisoned the soil, river systems, lakes and rice paddies of Vietnam, enabling toxic chemicals to enter the food chain.

Vietnamese people weren’t the only ones poisoned by Agent Orange. U.S. soldiers, unaware of the dangers, sometimes showered in the empty 55-gallon drums, used them to store food and repurposed them as barbecue pits.

Unlike the effects of another chemical weapon used in Vietnam – namely napalm, which caused painful death by burns or asphyxiation – Agent Orange exposure did not affect its victims immediately.

In the first generation, the impacts were mostly visible in high rates of various forms of cancer among both U.S. soldiers and Vietnam residents.

But then the children were born. It is estimated that, in total, tens of thousands of people have suffered serious birth defects – spina bifida, cerebral palsy, physical and intellectual disabilities and missing or deformed limbs. Because the effects of the chemical are passed from one generation to the next, Agent Orange is now debilitating its third and fourth generation.

A legacy of environmental devastation

During the 10-year campaign, U.S. aircraft targeted 4.5 million acres across 30 different provinces in the area below the 17th parallel and in the Mekong Delta, destroying inland hardwood forests and coastal mangrove swamps as they sprayed.

The most heavily exposed locations – among them Dong Nai, Binh Phuoc, Thua Thien Hue and Kontum – were sprayed multiple times. Toxic hotspots also remain at several former U.S. air force bases.

And while research in those areas is limited – an extensive 2003 studywas canceled in 2005 due to a reported “lack of mutual understanding” between the U.S. and the Vietnamese governments – evidence suggests that the heavily polluted soil and water in these locations have yet to recover.

The dangerous quantity of residual dioxin in the earth thwarts the normal growth of crops and trees, while continuing to poison the food chain.

Vietnam’s natural defenses were also debilitated. Nearly 50 percent of the country’s mangroves, which protect shorelines from typhoons and tsunamis, were destroyed.

On a positive note, the Vietnamese government and both local and international organizations are making strides toward restoring this critical landscape. The U.S. and Vietnam are also undertaking a joint remediation program to deal with dioxin-contaminated soil and water.

The destruction of Vietnamese forests, however, has proven irreversible. The natural habitat of such rare species as tigers, elephants, bears and leopards were distorted, in many cases beyond repair.

In parts of central and southern Vietnam that were already exposed to environmental hazards such as frequent typhoons and flooding in low-lying areas and droughts and water scarcity in the highlands and Mekong Delta, herbicide spraying led to nutrient loss in the soil.

This, in turn, has caused erosion, compromising forests in 28 river basins. As a result, flooding has gotten worse in numerous watershed areas.

Some of these vulnerable areas also happen to be very poor and, these days, home to a large number of Agent Orange victims.

War propaganda and delayed justice

During Operation Ranch Hand, the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments spent considerable time and effort making the claim that tactical herbicides were safe for humans and the environment.

It launched a public relations campaign included educational programs showing civilians happily applying herbicides to their skin and passing through defoliated areas without concern.

One prominent comic strip featured a character named Brother Namwho explained that “The only effect of defoliant is to kill trees and force leaves to whither, and normally does not cause harm to people, livestock, land, or the drinking water of our compatriots.”

It’s abundantly clear now that this is false. Allegedly, chemical manufacturers had informed the U.S. military that Agent Orange was toxic, but spraying went forward anyway.

Today, Agent Orange has become a contentious legal and political issue, both within Vietnam and internationally. From 2005 to 2015, more than 200,000 Vietnamese victims suffering from 17 diseases linked to cancers, diabetes and birth defects were eligible for limited compensation, via a government program.

U.S. companies, including Monsanto and Dow Chemical, have taken the position that the governments involved in the war are solely responsible for paying out damages to Agent Orange victims. In 2004, a Vietnamese group unsuccessfully attempted to sue some 30 companies, alleging that the use of chemical weapons constituted a war crime. The class action case was dismissed in 2005 by a district court in Brooklyn, New York.

Many American victims have had better luck, though, seeing successful multi-million-dollar class action settlements with manufacturers of the chemical, including Dow, in 1984 and 2012.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government recently allocated more than US$13 billion to fund expanded Agent Orange-related health services in America. No such plan is in store in Vietnam.

It is unlikely that the U.S. will admit liability for the horrors Agent Orange unleashed in Vietnam. To do so would set an unwelcome precedent: Despite official denials, the U.S. and its allies, including Israel, have been accused of using chemical weapons in conflicts in Gaza, Iraqand Syria.

As a result, nobody is officially accountable for the suffering of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. The Burns and Novick documentary could have finally raised this uncomfortable truth, but, alas, the directors missed their chance.

This story was co-authored by Hang Thai T.M., a research assistant at the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology, in Hanoi.

[catdotjpeg]

Palestinian-led group Within Our Lifetime held a rally in Brooklyn on Saturday (3 Aug) for Black and Palestinian liberation:

In response to the massacres in Palestine and Sonya Massey's murder in Illinois, we call on NYC to flood Brooklyn and uplift our collective liberation struggles on August 3rd for an international day of solidarity with Gaza & Palestinian prisoners. Join us in solidarity with the Black freedom struggle and the fight to free all political prisoners from the U.S to Palestine.

[ralphmorgan-blog1]

New York explosion: Suspect in pipe bomb pledged allegiance to ISIS, officials say

(CNN)It was the latest lone wolf attack to target New York City. And it might have been worse.

Authorities said the explosion in a walkway below Port Authority Bus Terminal was an isolated attempted terrorist attack. Officials said the suspect, 27-year-old Akayed Ullah, pledged allegiance to ISIS and said he acted in response to Israeli actions in Gaza.

Investigators said the suspect had at least two devices, a law enforcement source with knowledge of the investigation told CNN. The device that detonated was a foot-long pipe that contained black powder, a battery, wiring, nails and screws. It was attached to Ullah with Velcro and zip ties. Investigators did not elaborate on the second device, the source said.

The explosive chemical ignited in the pipe but the pipe itself did not explode, lessening its impact, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told CNN's Wolf Blitzer.

"Fortunately for us, the bomb partially detonated," he said. "He did detonate it, but it did not fully have the effect that he was hoping for."

Latest developments

Ullah's movements: The suspect was first spotted on a security camera as he began to climb the subway station stairs to the 18th Avenue F. train platform in Brooklyn at 6:25 a.m. about an hour before the attack, according to one law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

He then switched to the A train at Jay St./MetroTech stop in Brooklyn before exiting the train at the Port Authority Bus Terminal stop in Manhattan, the same law enforcement official says.

How bomb was made: The suspect made the bomb last week at his apartment in Brooklyn, according to one law enforcement official with direct knowledge of the investigation.

Suspect's condition: Ullah is at Bellevue Hospital, where he is being treated for lacerations and burns to his hands and abdomen, New York City Fire Department Commissioner Daniel Nigro said. Five people were treated for minor injuries in area hospitals.

His prior credentials: Ullah held a Taxi & Limousine Commission license from March 2012 to March 2015, after which the license was not renewed, TLC spokesman Allan Fromberg said. It's unclear "whether he drove for any particular base, or whether he simply got the license but didn't drive at all," Fromberg said.

Residency: He is of Bangladeshi descent and lives in Brooklyn, two law enforcement sources told CNN. Ullah came to the United States in 2011 on an F43 family immigrant visa, said Department of Homeland Security spokesman Tyler Houlton. He is a lawful permanent resident.

What his neighbor says: Alan Butrico owns a Brooklyn building next to the home where he says Ullah lives with his family. He said Ullah lives in the basement, while his sister and brother live above him. "He wasn't friendly at all. The family was very quiet themselves. They don't talk to nobody. They just stay there," he said, adding that his tenants reported hearing "screaming and yelling" coming from Ullah's home the last two nights. The tenants did not call police, he said.

'Just a lot of chaos'

The blast detonated around 7:20 a.m. in an underground walkway connecting two subway lines beneath the bus terminal, which accommodates 220,000 passenger trips a day.

On grainy surveillance footage, commuters are seen walking through a tunnel when a burst of smoke erupts into the hallway, quickly filling it. Commuters flinch and take cover. When the smoke clears, a man can be seen lying on the ground in the hallway.

Francisco Ramirez said he was exiting a bus when he heard two blasts, even though he was wearing headphones.

"From what I saw it sounded like it came from the subway, but I'm just guessing," he said. "It was two distinct explosions seconds from each other. As I was making my way toward the outside, I kept getting shoved by cops and there were cops at every entrance blocking and there was police and SWAT everywhere.

"It was scary. It was just a lot of chaos but I didn't see any injuries."

Marlyn Yu Sherlock was at a retail store on the main floor of the terminal when people began flooding out of the subway entrance, "screaming, running in panic," she said.

"The PA system was still blaring Christmas carols," Sherlock said. "It took about four minutes before men in black cop uniforms started shooing people out of Port Authority. As I walked further away from the building, I kept asking the heavily armed cops what it was. They said 'suspicious package.'"

Terror links?

Police Commissioner James O'Neill called it a "terror-related incident." A key point of the investigation will be determining if Ullah intended to detonate the device in the hallway, he said.

Four Port Authority Police Officers confronted the suspect in the smoke-filled passageway and intervened, the president of the Port Authority Police Benevolent Association said. He identified the officers as Sean Gallagher, Drew M. Preston, John "Jack" F. Collins and Anthony Manfredini.

"Today, four courageous Port Authority police officers risked their lives confronting an armed terrorist to protect others from harm," Paul Nunziato said.

Mayor Bill de Blasio called the incident an "attempted terrorist attack" and said there were no credible, specific threats against the city at this moment.

By Monday afternoon, all subway stations with direct access to the terminal were reopened. The passageway remained closed.

Previous attacks

The incident comes a few weeks after a deadly terror attack in Lower Manhattan.

A man was charged with killing eight people and injuring a dozen others as he drove a pickup truck down a bicycle path near the World Trade Center on Halloween. He was arrested after the truck hit a school bus, stopping it in its tracks. He exited the vehicle and an officer shot him.

The suspect, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov, was indicted last month on murder and terror-related charges, the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York said. Saipov pleaded not guilty to 22 federal counts.

The Halloween incident was the deadliest terror attack in New York City since the September 11, 2001, attack on the World Trade Center.

The incident came less than a year after a pressure cooker bomb went off in New York's Chelsea neighborhood, wounding 30 people. A second pressure cooker bomb was found a few blocks away but didn't detonate. In October, a jury convicted Ahmad Rahimi of eight federal charges in connection with the September 2016 incident.

More From this publisher : HERE ; This post was curated using : TrendingTraffic

=> *********************************************** Learn More Here: New York explosion: Suspect in pipe bomb pledged allegiance to ISIS, officials say ************************************ =>

New York explosion: Suspect in pipe bomb pledged allegiance to ISIS, officials say was originally posted by A 18 MOA Top News from around

[djgblogger-blog]

Agent Orange, exposed: How U.S. chemical warfare in Vietnam unleashed a slow-moving disaster

http://bit.ly/2fJJ138

Unlike napalm, which immediately scalded its victims, Agent Orange kills and maims slowly over time, its effects passed down through generations. U.S. Army Operations in Vietnam R.W. Trewyn, Ph.D/Wikimedia

In the end, the military campaign was called Operation Ranch Hand, but it originally went by a more appropriately hellish appellation: Operation Hades. As part of this Vietnam War effort, from 1961 to 1971, the United States sprayed over 73 million liters of chemical agents on the country to strip away the vegetation that provided cover for Vietcong troops in “enemy territory.”

Using a variety of defoliants, the U.S. military also intentionally targeted cultivated land, destroying crops and disrupting rice production and distribution by the largely communist National Liberation Front, a party devoted to reunification of North and South Vietnam.

Some 45 million liters of the poisoned spray was Agent Orange, which contains the toxic compound dioxin. It has unleashed in Vietnam a slow-onset disaster whose devastating economic, health and ecological impacts that are still being felt today.

This is one of the greatest legacies of the country’s 20-year war, but is yet to be honestly confronted. Even Ken Burns and Lynn Novick seem to gloss over this contentious issue, both in their supposedly exhaustive “Vietnam War” documentary series and in subsequent interviews about the horrors of Vietnam.

Vietnam’s half-century of disaster

More than 10 years of U.S. chemical warfare in Vietnam exposed an estimated 2.1 to 4.8 million Vietnamese people to Agent Orange. More than 40 years on, the impact on their health has been staggering.

This dispersion of Agent Orange over a vast area of central and south Vietnam poisoned the soil, river systems, lakes and rice paddies of Vietnam, enabling toxic chemicals to enter the food chain.

Vietnamese people weren’t the only ones poisoned by Agent Orange. U.S. soldiers, unaware of the dangers, sometimes showered in the empty 55-gallon drums, used them to store food and repurposed them as barbecue pits.

Unlike the effects of another chemical weapon used in Vietnam – namely napalm, which caused painful death by burns or asphyxiation – Agent Orange exposure did not affect its victims immediately.

In the first generation, the impacts were mostly visible in high rates of various forms of cancer among both U.S. soldiers and Vietnam residents.

But then the children were born. It is estimated that, in total, tens of thousands of people have suffered serious birth defects – spina bifida, cerebral palsy, physical and intellectual disabilities and missing or deformed limbs. Because the effects of the chemical are passed from one generation to the next, Agent Orange is now debilitating its third and fourth generation.

Aerial spraying in central and southern Vietnam. Wikimedia

A legacy of environmental devastation

During the 10-year campaign, U.S. aircraft targeted 4.5 million acres across 30 different provinces in the area below the 17th parallel and in the Mekong Delta, destroying inland hardwood forests and coastal mangrove swamps as they sprayed.

The most heavily exposed locations – among them Dong Nai, Binh Phuoc, Thua Thien Hue and Kontum – were sprayed multiple times. Toxic hotspots also remain at several former U.S. air force bases.

And while research in those areas is limited – an extensive 2003 study was canceled in 2005 due to a reported “lack of mutual understanding” between the U.S. and the Vietnamese governments – evidence suggests that the heavily polluted soil and water in these locations have yet to recover.

The dangerous quantity of residual dioxin in the earth thwarts the normal growth of crops and trees, while continuing to poison the food chain.

Vietnam’s natural defenses were also debilitated. Nearly 50 percent of the country’s mangroves, which protect shorelines from typhoons and tsunamis, were destroyed.

On a positive note, the Vietnamese government and both local and international organizations are making strides toward restoring this critical landscape. The U.S. and Vietnam are also undertaking a joint remediation program to deal with dioxin-contaminated soil and water.

Mangrove forests before and after spraying. Wikimedia

The destruction of Vietnamese forests, however, has proven irreversible. The natural habitat of such rare species as tigers, elephants, bears and leopards were distorted, in many cases beyond repair.

In parts of central and southern Vietnam that were already exposed to environmental hazards such as frequent typhoons and flooding in low-lying areas and droughts and water scarcity in the highlands and Mekong Delta, herbicide spraying led to nutrient loss in the soil.

This, in turn, has caused erosion, compromising forests in 28 river basins. As a result, flooding has gotten worse in numerous watershed areas.

Some of these vulnerable areas also happen to be very poor and, these days, home to a large number of Agent Orange victims.

War propaganda and delayed justice

During Operation Ranch Hand, the U.S. and South Vietnamese governments spent considerable time and effort making the claim that tactical herbicides were safe for humans and the environment.

U.S. propaganda about Agent Orange was so effective, it fooled American troops into thinking it was safe, too.

It launched a public relations campaign included educational programs showing civilians happily applying herbicides to their skin and passing through defoliated areas without concern.

One prominent comic strip featured a character named Brother Nam who explained that “The only effect of defoliant is to kill trees and force leaves to whither, and normally does not cause harm to people, livestock, land, or the drinking water of our compatriots.”

Brother Nam assured readers that herbicides were safe. Wikimedia

It’s abundantly clear now that this is false. Allegedly, chemical manufacturers had informed the U.S. military that Agent Orange was toxic, but spraying went forward anyway.

Today, Agent Orange has become a contentious legal and political issue, both within Vietnam and internationally. From 2005 to 2015, more than 200,000 Vietnamese victims suffering from 17 diseases linked to cancers, diabetes and birth defects were eligible for limited compensation, via a government program.

U.S. companies, including Monsanto and Dow Chemical, have taken the position that the governments involved in the war are solely responsible for paying out damages to Agent Orange victims. In 2004, a Vietnamese group unsuccessfully attempted to sue some 30 companies, alleging that the use of chemical weapons constituted a war crime. The class action case was dismissed in 2005 by a district court in Brooklyn, New York.

Many American victims have had better luck, though, seeing successful multi-million-dollar class action settlements with manufacturers of the chemical, including Dow, in 1984 and 2012.

Meanwhile, the U.S. government recently allocated more than US$13 billion to fund expanded Agent Orange-related health services in America. No such plan is in store in Vietnam.

It is unlikely that the U.S. will admit liability for the horrors Agent Orange unleashed in Vietnam. To do so would set an unwelcome precedent: Despite official denials, the U.S. and its allies, including Israel, have been accused of using chemical weapons in conflicts in Gaza, Iraq and Syria.

As a result, nobody is officially accountable for the suffering of Vietnamese victims of Agent Orange. The Burns and Novick documentary could have finally raised this uncomfortable truth, but, alas, the directors missed their chance.

This story was co-authored by Hang Thai T.M., a research assistant at the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology, in Hanoi.

Jason von Meding receives funding from Save the Children and the Australian government for disaster related research in Vietnam.